Don’t let attachments cause server issues

February 17, 2015

Everyone attaches files to their emails. You probably send and receive a number every day, be they PDFs, graphic rich files or presentations. Most people often send attachments without any thought, which can cause problems for businesses. Large attachments have the potential to take up a lot of space on an email server, causing it to slow down and possibly crash altogether. So, what can be done to take the strain off of your hardware? Should you implement attachment file limitations or implement an effective email archiving solution?

Implement attachment file limitations

By doing this, you are effectively blocking files of a certain size being sent or delivered via email. This brings with it a number of risks. By implementing limits on attachments that employees can send, some emails will fail if the attachment is too big. This could lead to important files not being received by either party.

Also, the quality of the attachments such as design proofs could suffer as files would have to be reduced in in size before sending. If a limit is put in place, you could find that many emails go undelivered.

Some argue that you can simply send documents via cloud-based programs like Dropbox, which provides an extra level of hassle as the program has to be monitored to ensure that the right documents are reaching the right people. Inevitably, an employee will make a mistake or an attachment will get lost.

Also, to be truly effective and secure, you really need to purchase business level packages of these programs, which means an extra recurring expense that your business could probably do without.

Implement an effective email archiving solution

An email archiving solution can easily relieve the strain on email servers struggling with file-heavy email attachments. With email archiving, users can continue to use emails in the way they normally would, but old emails are taken away from the server. This improves the overall performance of your hardware and ensures important emails are not lost due to attachment limits or system failures.

When you choose the right email archiving solution, you can maintain the integrity of your email communications and make sure that your hardware continues to run smoothly. There is then no need for the deletion of large files or for any limits to be imposed on attachments that could cause a file to get lost.

Do you think email archiving is an effective solution to the issue of large email attachments?